David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.

29 August 2014

Tonight and tomorrow :'Kiffy Rubbo and The George Paton Gallery : Curating the 1970s'

A dynamic and unique force in Australian art, Kiffy Rubbo was director of the Ewing (later the George Paton) Gallery, at the University of Melbourne Student Union, 1971-1980. For the first time, her major role in Australian visual culture as well as her legacy are explored. Her curatorial strategies and the narratives she proposed about contemporary art are investigated together with the Gallery's radical agenda. With Meredith Rogers, assistant director (1974-1979), Rubbo devised an innovative and inclusive program presenting a wide range of art forms. Under Rubbo's leadership, the Gallery became a vital, nationally recognised venue, the first institutionally supported experimental art space.

Below, Theatre of the Actors of Regard at the Ewing Gallery, 1974; at 'Events/Structures', a two week program curated by Peter Cripps. Peter is squatting at the back; beside him is Aleks Danko, with beard; standing beside Aleks is Jennifer Phipps who died last week - NGV curator through the 1970s. Vale Jennifer. Performance with theremin by Philippa Cullen. Kiffy is seated on the floor, back to the wall, on the right.

Not half so famous as Blake, but much appreciated at bLOGOS/HA HA, is Albert Guillaume (1873-1942). Here, from The Debt Collection, is his vision of Dante and Virgil at Denfert Station as they update their hell realms tour.

22 August 2014

screen shot from the Melbourne Writers Festival websitecourtesy : Theatre of the Actors of RegardGerald Murnane is regarded...Today, it will be via A Million Windows (2014). In 1990, via 720 WAYS OF LOOKING AT GERALD.

John Bangsund - the instigator of the term Muphry's law, which is much appreciated at bLOGOS/HA HA and which states that "if you write anything criticizing editing or proof-reading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written" - gave that title to his grid of 720 G.E.R.A.L.D. x G.E.R.A.L.D. text block permutations. Below is a detail of that past and present regard :720 WAYS OF LOOKING AT GERALDplayed a part at the MIMA 1990 gathering of The Literature Club. A page from the script :click image to read the full page

16 August 2014

Hell writ large and small. Suffering and stupidity. More warnings. Acts of compassion and of great kindness too. Business as usual (see: plutocracy, plutonomy).As we write this, on the radio Robyn Williams, not Robin Williams the comedic mind-mouth genius who took his life this week, but Robyn Williams the longtime presenter of the Science Show is inter-viewing Naomi Oreskes, Professor of the History of Science at Harvard, about her novel co-written with Erik M Conway.The Collapse of Western Civilization : A View from the FuturedetailA Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

Yet another wake-up call!

Their previous book wasMerchants of Doubt : How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.

Hence, the front page of this morning's 'Saturday Paper' (here) has the striking headline :

Abbott's piss and wind power on renewable energy

Image of the Week : "That's my boy!"A photo posted on social media by the convicted Sydney terrorist Khaled Sharrouf, now abroad with his family and fighting as part of ISIS, shows his seven year old son holding up the severed head of a Syrian soldier. (SMH article here)

Lost for words : Responding to this, President Obama adds the word barbarian to terrorist : "these barbarian terrorists".What's in a word?Bomber, for instance. One thing (a great reminder of 'The Two Truths') about being a supporter of the Bombers, about publicly wearing a scarf emblazoned BOMBERS, especially on the streets of Melbourne, is that most people hereabouts see such a BOMBERS scarf and think only of sport, of Australian Rules Football, of the Essendon Football Club, The Bombers. Usually, when your correspondent points out this semantic curiosity to others, that The Bombers have nothing (sic) to do with the War On Terror, they say: "Oh yeah. I never thought of that". Team Australia : After our Bombers Seek Justicepost of 11 August, the stats showed a series of visits to this post from Canberra :and If we have nothing to fear but fear itself we have nothing to hide, right? Who is metadata, what is she, that all her swains defend her?

During this week, in which the Australian banks announced their latest billion dollar record profits, SBS.TV re-screened Michael Moore's 'Capitalism, a love story' and ABC Latelineshowed an interview with 'venture capitalist' Nick Hanauer in which he, too, warns (video and transcript here) of a revolution against the US plutonomy.

Still on this, the nation was shown a further glimpse of the mind-set of the Australian Federal Treasurer, cigar smokin' millionaire Joe Hockey. Even Abbott & Co backed away from this one, such was the odour. Hockey's view of the poor delivered him his own professional-political death sentence:

Quote of the Week : already paraphrased as 'Poor people don't drive cars'.

"I don’t think that a cursory look at the Budget is enough for people to understand what we’re really getting at. You have to look at the detailof what people actually receive now, and people are receiving tens of thousands of dollars in payments from other Australians. What we’re asking is for everyone to contribute, including higher income people. Now, I’ll give you one example: the change to fuel excise, the people that actually pay the most are higher income people, with an increase in fuel excise and yet, the Labor Party and the Greens are opposing it. They say you’ve got to have wealthier people or middle-income people pay more. Well, change to the fuel excise does exactly that; the poorest people either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far in many cases. But, they are opposing what is meant to be, according to the Treasury, a progressive tax."- Full transcript here

detailA Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

Out of the blue, early-1980s memories of the founder-editor of Art & Text, Paul Taylor delivering copies of that journal to Melbourne bookshops in his red MG.Below, as observed by TAR leaving Melb Art Fair a Hockey-ite with fat cigar

13 August 2014

OPENING NIGHT VERNISSAGE :

A CELEBRATION OF LIVING ARTISTS

Tonight, Wednesday 13 August 2014Time: 6pm - 10pmLocation: The Royal Exhibition Building, CarltonTickets: $150It is advisable to book in advance although a limited amount will be available to purchase at the door this evening.

Plus ça change...L'Exposition de Melbourne The Royal Exhibition BuildingJune 1881

click image to enlargeAAA_Art Archive Australia

and 'Spring 1883'

When three of Australia’s most proactive and progressive contemporary art world identities put their heads together, something interesting is bound to emerge. In this instance the result is an exciting new art fair that is set to give the grand dame of Australian art fairs (Melbourne Art Fair) a run for its money.

The brainchild of Melbourne galleristsVasili Kaliman(Station),Geoff Newton(Neon Parc), andVikki McInnes(Sarah Scout Presents), the new fair, entitledSpring 1883, will take place at Melbourne’s historic Hotel Windsor from August 14-17, 2014.

11 August 2014

Following on from yesterday's post about QCs and SCs, among other matters, today it has been three QCs and one SC closer to home - most of Team bLOGOS/HA HA are supporters of the Bombers (Essendon Footbal Club) - as we watched together the opening presentations of the extraordinary Federal Court battle between the Bombers and ASADA broadcast live on Australian TV.

Neil Young QC for the Essendon Footbal ClubPeter Hanks SC lead counsel for James HirdDavid Grace QC for the 34 Bombers playersTom Howe QC lead counsel for ASADA

These contestants' representatives certainly knew their brief much better than QC George Brandis did his meta- business. Being LOGOphiles and LOLphiles, we listened with a lulling rapture to their strange-poetry of the Law.

Three terms or phrases stuck :1. over-reach (by the anti-doping authority)2. the Latin equivalent of that : ultra vires (‘beyond powers’)3. And we jotted this one down as we heard it - clever lawyer, leaving such a clear image to his last sentence. Mr Howe QC : "Indeed, your honour, the expression 'nonsense on stilts' comes to mind."

None of us knew that expression, but we all liked it. Our illustrator immediately set-about (see below) as others turned to Google. Turns out it is the sort of phrase one who has read Law might well recall, by the admirable Jeremy Bentham.

Jeremy Bentham by Henry William Pickersgill (detail)full image HEREJeremy Bentham (February1748 – June 1832) was a British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer. He is regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.

Bentham became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and the decriminalising of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery, the abolition of the death penalty, and the abolition of physical punishment, including that of children. He has also become known in recent years as an early advocate of animal rights. Though strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights, calling them "nonsense upon stilts".- Wikipedia What rough beast is this then, approaching us on stilts? Tis ideoMAN. That mighty Sherrin-headed Bomber fan! detail A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

10 August 2014

Yesterday, upon the stair,I met a meta-man who wasn't there.He wasn't there again today,I wish, I wish he'd go away...

- opening verse of 'Are We Not Meta-Men?' after Devo and with apologies to Hughes Mearns.

Mearns' 1899 poem "Antigonish" was originally part of a play calledThe Psyco-ed. It's a great title. One that suits well the meta-madness of this last week in the land of the chosen (i.e. not-rejected) whom Prime Minister Tony Abbott now refers to as (also this last week) TEAM AUSTRALIA.

So, BuzzWord of the Week : metadata

And associated with that, the problematic, generally unfamilar, BuzzPrefix of the Week : meta-The government has indicated it plans to formalise the collection and storage of our internet metadata. But they have struggled to demonstrate to the public that even they, the law makers, understand what they are referring to when they refer to metadata.The Prime Minister, Tony Abbott :'Let's be clear', he begins. Then he suggests a metaphor 4 metadata :

PM_ABC.RN (6 August 2014) : TONY ABBOTT: "Let's be clear what this so-called metadata is. It's not the content of the letter: it's what's on the envelope, if I might use a metaphor that I think most Australians would understand. It's not what you're doing on the internet: it's the sites you're visiting. It's not the content: it's just where you've been, so to speak."

But, holes soon appear in this explanation, too. FIAPCE meta-mice infiltrate envelope metadata metaphorFlushed with the skill and wisdom of his promotion of amendments to the 18C Free Speech legislation, George 'People do have a right to be bigots' Brandis decides that he will have a crack at it.After all, he's already well-rehearsed this topic at a Parliamentary Committee appearance :

click the images to view these clipsSome background for our international readers : George Brandis is not some rarely-heard inarticulate back-bencher. He is the Attourney General for Australia, the first law officer of the Crown in right of the Commonwealth of Australia.

Of the Crown, indeed, by his preference. Brandis was appointed a Senior Counsel of the Supreme Court of Queensland in November 2006. In June 2013 the original title of Queen's Counsel was restored by the Queensland Government and Brandis was one of 70 (out of 74) Queensland SCs that chose to become QCs. (Wikipedia)

Only partly off topic : how much is a QC/SC paid for their advocacy skills?

For our sins, George Brandis is also the Minister for the Arts. Eventually, that naughty but clever Malcolm Turnbull, Minister for Communications, is sent in to clean up the mata-mess.

AM_ABC.RN (8 August 2014) :MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: "Well, you do accept there was a lot of confusion over the last couple of days?"

MALCOLM TURNBULL: "Well, look, let's, let's... I'll leave you to talk about the last couple of days. My concern is simply to be crystal clear about what we're talking about. I think one of the difficulties with a term like metadata is that it can mean different things to different people. And so you have to be very clear about what we're talking about."

Over to you again, James Joyce :"Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse." (Ulysses, Ch 9)

And, from the world of Golden Oldie Frames between Inside-ers and Outside-ers, beween notions of content and context, here's another metablast fave from TEAM FIAPCE (-1978-) :

06 August 2014

T.G.T.T. by Duke Ellington must surely be both our favorite Title and meta-Title-with-twist : Too Good To Title T.G.T.T. is track 10 on Ellington's Second Sacred Concert album, 1968. Wordless, sung by Alice Babs. An echo of the ineffable, the nameless, the un-namable, perhaps. As in NNFA, No Name For Art, for _rt.As in NNFG, No Name For God, for G_d, YHWHT.G.T.T.

The final track of Second Sacred Concert is Titled : 'Praise God And Dance'.

Praise ___ and Dance fits well with this chromo-lithograph (1880-1900) that we've recently had on show in the office here.Our staff artist - who was at Festival Hall, Melbourne in January 1970 when Duke Ellington and his all-star orchestra played at that famous barn - has now re-presented the joyful scene above as 'The Piper of Bonzaview with projection-space ideogram dancers'.

En mesure, mesdemoiselles!

click image to enlarge

And did our artist know about the 2003 compilation Duke Ellington - Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band 1940-1942 when colouring the 'Label Music' notation yellow, red and blue? We asked. Apparently not.